Republicans Will Keep Filibuster

I was thinking out loud over at Roger Simon's about the "real" meaning of the delay in Bolton's nomination. I came to the conclusion it was political.

Here is what I had to say:

The Blue State Republicans need some quiet from the Religous right. I think this has nothing to do with Bolton.

The question is do the Republicans want to keep their coalition together or not? That is what Voinovich is trying to get across.

The President is not going to get a series of hard right religious judges. He will get right moderates. From his own party.

Which is why they are going to back off from changing the cloture rule. With a 60 vote rule they can blame the Democrats. With a 50 vote rule they will have no one to blame but themselves.

I think what the Republicans are finding out is that they do not have 50 votes within their party for hard right judges.

They will cover this by saying "tradition, blah, blah, blah,....." and "suppose the Democrats regain a majority, blah, blah, blah,.....". The real reason of course is that there are no more political parties. There are political coalitions with party names.

The Republicans are learning a hard fact:

Coalitions are ruled by their weakest members.

Bottom line: the filibuster will remain.